Who's going to dominate the SSD market? And
who are the companies who should be appearing on your partner or supplier
shortlist for further qualification?

I get asked this question by
VCs,
analysts, other
editors, SSD specifiers
and SSD vendors themselves. No one's got the time and brainpower to reliably
track and analyze huge numbers of SSD companies - many of whom are operating in
transient new market segments which may only have a very short market life - as
vendors and users arbitrate
the hotly disputed
questions of - where's the best place to put SSDs? and what's the best way
to design them?

I've been using search volume in my niche enterprise
buyers guides since 1996 as a sensitive and dependable short term detector
and long term predictor of where the market is heading. Search and reading
about vendors and their technologies is a necessary precursor to buying
activity.

StorageSearch.com was the first publication to recognize
the huge market potential of SSDs and our millions of readers (which includes
the founders and leading management in most SSD companies) have greatly
influenced the market in the past - and will continue to do so in the future.

What
better way to to spot rising and falling trends than to leverage the
intelligence of the world's best focus group for enterprise and military SSDs?
You can read more about the theory and methodology in previous editions of
this article (listed at the bottom of this page). The important thing is that
when you compare like with like from quarter to qiuarter it works!

Megabyte announces future
winners in the SSD market, based on the world's best focus group for
SSDs.

This is
Fusion-io's 8th straight quarter in the #1 slot. Fusion-io's search volume
was 51% higher than the #2 ranked company, and 8x higher than
the #20 ranked company in this list. Fusion-io epitomizes what I call the
New Dynasty
architectural trend in the enterprise SSD market.

Texas
Memory Systems epitomizes what I call the
Legacy
architectural trend in the enterprise SSD market. The company has continuously
marketed SSDs to accelerate enterprise servers longer than any other company
in this top 10 / 20 list.

For
a long time I was dubious about OCZ's aspirations in the server SSD market. But
I was wrong. OCZ is ambitious. And their dramatic upwards movement in these
lists in recent quarters confirms the value of objective data based vendor
rankings compared to subjective editor and analyst "picks".

In
October 2010OCZ
announced it will
open a new SSD
manufacturing plant in Taipei, increasing overall manufacturing capacity
to 140,000 units a month. OCZ said it sold over 54,000 SSDs in August - 3x
the monthly level at the start of this year.

The people who founded
WD's SSD business started talking about reliability in their SiliconDrive 2.5"
SLC SSD designs - aimed at the embedded market - in 2004. That's 7 years
ago! My article the
cultivation and nurturing of "reliability" in a 2.5" SSD brand
which discusses the marketing aspects of that - was the most popular article in
the SSD branding series in the 4th quarter of 2010. Nowadays a lot more
companies are talking about the internals of their SSDs.

The company's
notebook SSD (which uses a 3rd party controller and MLC flash) operates in a
different product universe altogether - with over 100 competitors.

We
may see some analysis of how WD's SSD products did in this quarter when the
company announces its results on January 18, 2011.

In
November 2010 -
RunCore launched the
world's first CF card compatible SSDs with fast (typically 30 seconds)
on-board sanitization
functions. The fast erase - which is designed to protect confidential data leaks
and thwart any attempts at
data recovery - is
achieved by pressing a button or activating erase pins while the device is
powered. It can be once again used by formatting after the data destruction
process.

In
November 2010 -
Foremayannounced
shipment of the fastest 1.8"
micro SATA slim flash SSDs - with 280MB/s R/W and random
IOPS as
follows:- up to 30,000 read and 15,000 write. The 5mm high SSDs have
capacity up to 400GB and are available in industrial temperature versions.

In
December 2010 - Samsung
announced it is sampling 400GB 2.5" SATA MLC SSDs for use as the
primary storage in enterprise storage systems (instead of hard drives). The new
SSDs can process random read commands at 43,000 IOPS and random writes at
11,000 IOPS. In addition, they have an 'end-to-end data protection' function
with advanced data encryption
algorithm to assure reliability
and security for the drive.

In
October 2010 - Samsung
said it is shipping 200GB 3.5"
SATA SLC SSDs to EMC.
Sequential R/W speeds are 260MB/s and 245MB/s respectively. R/W
IOPS are
47,000 and 29,000. The new Samsung SSDs have an 'end-to-end
data integrity'
function and encryption.

In October 2010 -
PhotoFast said it
would ship a 256GB USB
SSD for the
MacBook Air at the end of November. Sustained R/W speeds are 250MB/s.
Random R/W speeds are 50MB/s and 30MB/s respectively. It uses a controller from
SandForce.

But
later - in November 2010 - a report in
DailyTech.com
said that Apple had put pressure on PhotoFast to withdraw this MacBook Air
compatible SSD.

It's important to get some conetxt
here. Some companies which were in the top 20 list previously and whose search
volume increased in absolute terms nevertheless dropped down in rank in this
quarter. The reason being that the search volume for other SSD companies rose
even faster.

Editor's
comments:- OCZ isn't the first memory supplier to exit the commodity memory
market and it won't be the last either. The right time to do it depends on the
internal DNA of the company and external market dynamics.

All
memory companies will have to transition to the SSD market in the next 5
to 10 years or risk being locked out of what will be the
biggest market
for semiconductor memory.

There will be more memory in SSDs than in
traditional dumb raw memory banks. The reason is that without
SSD controller
technology - the uncorrectable error rates in high density
flash and even ECC
protected DRAM arrays
will make them unusable in the capacities that new processors and apps will
require.

Owning the
brand of a
successful SSD business will be a much preferable place to be than supplying
memory into the SSD box (from outside the company) at commodity prices.

This article will help you understand why some
SSDs which (work perfectly well in one type of application) might fail in
others... even when the changes in the operational environment appear to be
negligible.

Almost as soon as the first
bytewide CMOS static RAMs became available in the late 1970s - electronics
designers realized that with the addition of a small lithium battery (which
could maintain the RAM's contents in the unpowered state for 5 to 10 years) they
could easily create a unique type of storage device...

The most important thing is being included in
the list rather than the position within it. As the number of SSD oems has grown
- it's much harder than it used to be to break into the top 10.

I
sometimes get emails from SSD product managers griping about the validity of
these lists. My reply is that it's a marketing reality they have to live
with. Just as being ranked #1 or #1,001 on Google could make a big difference to
your company - our SSD rankings will make a difference to your business.

High
rankings mean that more people in the market are interested in learning more
about what you're saying. On the other hand - if your business plan is to be a
leading shaker in the SSD market and your company has never appeared in these
lists - then you have an uphill struggle - and success could take a lot longer
than you think.

I also get asked by companies - what can I do to
get into the list and improve my rankings?

My reply is - "Design
better SSDs. Improve your SSD marketing. Improve the customer experience of
using your SSDs. Get your most enthusiastic customers to spread the word
about you by telling people they know that you are such a great supplier."

The
converse is also true.

You can see how the rankings have changed in
past quarters and years by clicking on the links on the right.

...

Past editions
of this popular article which tracks the search volume of millions of SSD
readers.